HAPPY BIRTHDAY To Me

My 40th birthday might have been the impetus for dragging 30-odd friends to Venice for a series of experiences that culminated in a black-tie masked ball at the Venice Venice Hotel. But my real reason for the celebration was to honor creativity, culture, and connection, opening a channel to the divine within.

- BY NATASHA NYANIN

I HAVE FOUND MYSELF, in the weeks prior to and post celebration, lauded (and judged) for giving myself permission to celebrate myself. In truth, though, I did not need to give myself permission. It may be because I am the fruit of a Ghanaian culture that is rooted in celebration, but I suspect that the normalcy, in my eyes, of memorializing such a milestone in a magnificent manner is born of my mother. I was 4 years old when my mother turned 40. She threw a black-tie party in the garden of our home in Accra, Ghana, an evening during which I insisted on clinking my juice cup with the champagne coupes of the penguin gents and princess ladies. With that memory ever effervescent in me 36 years on, nights like the one I shared in Venice with friends never seemed like only the stuff of dreams to me: They are the raw material of real life. Perhaps without my mother's unapologetic gait through the world, I would not know the confidence it takes to simply be yourself in a culture that demands you be anything but; I might not possess the conviction that celebrating is an incarnation of gratitude.

I chose Venice for its sheer pulchritude quotient and because an aspect of my life's mission has been spreading what I call "Beauty Without Borders"—the notion that we must seek beauty far and wide, but also not restrict it to certain set perceptions. The travels that have taken me deep into northern Namibia to learn from the women of the Himba tribe have yielded as much beauty as the nights I have spent under the dome of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma seeing a Puccini opera.